Economy

Economic overview: Jordan is a small Arab country with inadequate supplies of water and other natural resources such as oil and coal. Jordan benefited from increased Arab aid during the oil boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when its annual real GNP growth averaged more than 10%. In the remainder of the 1980s, however, reductions in both Arab aid and worker remittances slowed real economic growth to an average of roughly 2% per year. Imports - mainly oil, capital goods, consumer durables, and food - outstripped exports, with the difference covered by aid, remittances, and borrowing. In mid-1989, the Jordanian Government began debt-rescheduling negotiations and agreed to implement an IMF-supported program designed to gradually reduce the budget deficit and implement badly needed structural reforms. The Persian Gulf crisis that began in August 1990, however, aggravated Jordan's already serious economic problems, forcing the government to shelve the IMF program, stop most debt payments, and suspend rescheduling negotiations. Aid from Gulf Arab states, worker remittances, and trade contracted; and refugees flooded the country, producing serious balance-of-payments problems, stunting GDP growth, and straining government resources. The economy rebounded in 1992, largely due to the influx of capital repatriated by workers returning from the Gulf, but the recovery was uneven throughout 1994 and 1995. The government is implementing the reform program adopted in 1992 and continues to secure rescheduling and write-offs of its heavy foreign debt. Debt, poverty, and unemployment remain Jordan's biggest on-going problems.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $19.3 billion (1995 est.)
GDP real growth rate: 6.5% (1995 est.)
GDP per capita: $4,700 (1995 est.)
GDP composition by sector:
agriculture: 11%
industry: 25%
services: 64% (1994)
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 3% (1995 est.)
Labor force: 600,000 (1992)
by occupation: industry 11.4%, commerce, restaurants, and hotels 10.5%, construction 10.0%, transport and communications 8.7%, agriculture 7.4%, other services 52.0% (1992)
Unemployment rate: 16% (1994 est.)
Budget:
revenues: $2.5 billion
expenditures: $2.5 billion, including capital expenditures of $640 million (1996 est.)
Industries: phosphate mining, petroleum refining, cement, potash, light manufacturing
Industrial production growth rate: 5.6% (1994 est.)
Electricity:
capacity: 1,050,000 kW
production: 4.2 billion kWh
consumption per capita: 1,072 kWh (1993)
Agriculture: wheat, barley, citrus, tomatoes, melons, olives; sheep, goats, poultry
Exports: $1.7 billion (f.o.b., 1994)
commodities: phosphates, fertilizers, potash, agricultural products, manufactures
partners: India, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, EU, Indonesia, UAE
Imports: $3.8 billion (c.i.f., 1994)
commodities: crude oil, machinery, transport equipment, food, live animals, manufactured goods
partners: EU, US, Iraq, Japan, Turkey
External debt: $6.9 billion (1995 est.)
Economic aid:
recipient: ODA, $238 million (1993)
Currency: 1 Jordanian dinar (JD) = 1,000 fils
Exchange rates: Jordanian dinars (JD) per US$1 - 0.7090 (January 1996), 0.7005 (1995), 0.6987 (1994), 0.6928 (1993), 0.6797 (1992), 0.6808 (1991)
Fiscal year: calendar year